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Gilmore Girls May Get Revived On Netflix?
Sure, it's still unconfirmed. But that doesn't mean Tara Ariano and Nick Rheinwald-Jones can't talk about it.
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The Talk
I was pretty sure there wouldn't be any bigger Lauren Graham news today than that she and Mae Whitman are turning The Royal We, the latest novel by our friends Heather and Jessica, into a TV movie. How wrong I was!
Yeah, I feel bad that this totally steps on their amazing news, but I feel like they're big enough fans themselves to be cool with it.
So far, everything's still very qualified and conditional and rumoured and stuff. But the qualified rumour is that Netflix is reviving Gilmore Girls, with its original stars and creator, for four 90-minute movies. And you were so excited about it that the way I found out is that you emailed me. Talk about your feelings in this moment, Nick.
Well, I was checking Twitter in the elevator as I was leaving the dentist, as one does. And there it was! I didn't quite believe it at first until I saw tweet after tweet reiterating the news. (Obviously I follow the right people.) As Chris Traeger might say, my heart literally leapt from my body. Also, I was very excited that I got to break the news not only to you, but to my wife Alexis and my friend Rossanna, collectively the three biggest Gilmore Girls fans I know. (That being said, I am 100% ready to start looking this incredible amazing we-don't-deserve-it gift horse straight in the mouth.)
It's hard not to be concerned when the property in question is so beloved and was so important in a lot of ways but also kind of petered out in an unfortunate way after Amy Sherman-Palladino, who created it, got fired from it. She said at the show's reunion at the ATX Festival earlier this year that she's never watched the seventh season; now she will probably have to if for no other reason than to know where her successor left off.
Yeah, I'd like to believe that she'd be willing to pull a Dan Harmon and just pretend the not-her season didn't happen, but I think she's too classy for that (even though heaven knows she's entitled to). On the plus side, the fact that it's presumably picking up at least eight years after the "final episode" (I have to use scare quotes for anything referencing Season 7) means that she doesn't need to only pick up the plot threads from that "season."
You're right, she doesn't necessarily have to address them at all. People go through all kinds of changes in eight years. Even greater than the concern about what happened with the characters after she left, though, is that in that time, everyone who watched and loved the show wrote their own mental fanfic (and actual fanfic, too) about where they ended up -- and, inevitably, whom they ended up with. Expectations are going to be so high.
Indeed. And my first instinct is to say that her best bet will be to just thwart all expectations and go in a totally unexpected direction with the new material, despite the fact that that very approach worked so horribly with Arrested Development. As to more specific predictions, I kind of doubt we're going to see a lot of rehashing of Rory's past relationships. Jess already got a perfectly good sendoff, nobody gives a shit about Logan, and maybe we’ll see a little bit of Dean but I doubt he’ll be center stage. But Lorelai/Luke is unavoidable, and whichever way that plays out, I'm sure there will be some hardcore fans who swear that she got it wrong. So be it.
You're probably right about Dean, and yet reading that just broke my heart a little.
(But then, maybe you're wrong! Dawson's Creek did the right thing for Joey and Pacey in the end.) I also imagine dealing with the younger two Gilmore women's boy problems is far less a writing challenge for Sherman-Palladino than addressing the passing of Edward Herrmann. Buy shares of Kleenex now, everyone.
I would be surprised if at least one of those 90-minute episodes isn't devoted to Richard's funeral, and no matter how many "Kirk as a clumsy pallbearer" gags they try to throw in, it's going to be the saddest thing the show has ever done. But rightly so. It would be disingenuous for the writers to try to ignore or even slightly diminish his passing, and everyone in the cast and crew seemed to love him. As the TV Line article pointed out, this event also makes for a natural reason why everyone in the family would have to get together.
Think McCarthy comes back? She wasn't at the reunion and -- weirdly -- nooooooo one even mentioned her.
I thought Sherman-Palladino mentioned her at least once, when talking about the conception of the show and how it was so hard to convince the network to let her cast someone who wasn't rail-thin. But that might have been a different interview. I'd put the chances of Sookie returning at a solid 50-50. I'm sure the production team will do their best to make room to accommodate her busy movie schedule, so if she doesn't show up it's probably because she didn't want to do it.
I don't get the impression that, even with her film success, she'd be snobby about it. She is still doing Mike & Molly, after all.
(And I might get letters for this, but my feeling is that if you're only doing four episodes -- even movie-length ones -- Sookie doesn't need to be one of the highest priorities. There are already so many characters and plots that the writers are going to need to service in a fairly short amount of time, and Sookie was basically comic relief on a show that was already funny.)
I agree -- but that brings up another potential minefield, which is, which of the 7000 characters in the Stars Hollow-verse do make that cut? (I don't like your odds, Gypsy.)
My only hill to die on is Paris. Yes, she's also technically comic relief, but we need to see what happened to her.
Paris yes; Doyle, whatever. We know if Sherman-Palladino lets Daniel Palladino write any of them, we're going to spend one full episode on the road with Hep Alien, running into whatever other bands Palladino thinks are cool.
With periodic cutaways to ten-minute town meeting scenes.
Those might be shorter if we assume that by now Taylor has probably died of a rage stroke because someone mixed their recycling.
(Solid chance of that.) That's a good segue into another...question? hope? concern? Whatever you want to call it, I think it'll be a really good thing if Sherman-Palladino can write this whole thing herself, or at least most of it. Because my one overriding criticism I always had of the show is that it was wildly inconsistent, and that inconsistency appeared to be due to the fact that nobody on the writing staff could possibly match her writing style and skill. (I had the same issue with Bunheads.)
It would be great if she could write them all herself, and I feel like that's not out of the realm of possibility? It's not like she'd need to staff up a whole writers' room if they're not having to crank out episodes on a weekly series schedule. Far better for Netflix to wait and let her write them all than rush something to "air" just for the sake of it. If Netflix can be patient with Charlie Brooker on Black Mirror, I have to think she could get the same consideration.
This is true, and a big advantage of the show being produced outside of the crazy network machine. I do have some doubts about the 90-minute format, since it always felt like most Gilmore Girls episodes could have just as easily fit into a half-hour. But I can’t imagine Netflix imposed this on Sherman-Palladino, so she must be pretty confident that the stories will work this way.
And though we're all still a little shell-shocked that NBC's Coach reboot isn't happening after all...if this turns out to be true it will really soften the blow.
Yes. It's a solid consolation prize for not having Craig T. Nelson spouting Viagra jokes, or whatever that was going to be.
Viagra jokes < Boniva jokes. Can't wait to hear you tell some, Kelly Bishop.